UNCLASSIFIED i RELEASED IN PART B1 1 40 United States Department of State Washington C 20520 June 16 2000 a 3 MEMORANDUM 026EMS SECRET DECL 1 6X1 4050 Q3 The Secretary - FROM INR - J Stapleton Roy SUBJECT Pyongyang at the Summit There is much that is new in the recent Nerth-South summit but Pyongyang is carr ing out policies that have been much discussed in the leadership and in some cases were formulated and partially deployed years ago What appears to be a new more lively North Korean approach is really a return to familiar patterns temporarily suspended after the death of Kim 11 Song C It The basic DPRK decision to accept the legitimacy of the ROKG as a negotiating partner was made in the 1980s Kim I1 Song blessed the notion of a North-South summit iEET S In 1992 Kim Il Song aas DPRK President--received the ROK Prime Minister in Pyongyang and inquired as to the well being of then-ROK President Roh Tae WOO These were precedent shattering gestures and the North Koreans never backed away from them C Following Kim Il Song's death in July 1994 inter-Korean relations fell backwards in large part because ROK President Kim Yong Sam quickly and publicly made it known he thought the regime of Kim Jong Il could not last long and that he would seek to hasten its demise Kim Jong 11 in turn decided that he would not deal with Seoul while Kim Yong Sam was in power C As soon as Kim Dae Jung was elected the North signaled that it was prepared to reengage with Seoul The question became not whether but when On two occasions since Kim Dae Jung took office the two sides came close to reOpening government-to- government talks but the South Korean side for internal reasons fell back at the laSt minute CLASSIFIED BY J Stapleton Roy INR E O 12958 Reason 1 5 0 and UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE REVIEW AUTHORITY DONALD A JOHNSTON ID 13 OCT 2004 200302377 SSIFIED gears errcj 9 0w UNCLA UNCLASSIFIED Continued competition The North-South summit and beginning of a new dialogue transforms but does not end north-South competition ' The North Koreans knew they had lost the economic race with the South by the early 1980s and soon after the race for international recognition But Pyongyang has continued to- believe it could match the South in a politico mora1 competition about who could claim the mantle of post-war legitimacy as the most truly Korean Evidence that the ROK need have no concerns on this score notwithstanding many South Koreans remain surprisingly unconfidentln B1 We should expect that even with the new environment some of the old forms of the struggle will continue and many of the ingredients for clashes or incidents will persist B1 Moreover a familiar cycle is likely to emerge as the dialogue continues I B1 Rhetorical openings Although the North continues to put reunification high on its rhetorical list of goals this issue has not been a driving force behind DPRK policy for many years In fact several times over the past 20 years Pyongyang has redefined and made more elastic the term reunification allowing itself increasing flexibility to deal with the South while still claiming progress towards reunification iC On the question of tr00ps the North's rhetoric has been somewhat more cautious Any fiddling with the official formulations on this issue would have an immediate and wide- UNCLASSIFIED I 3 UNCLASSIFIED -3- ranging impact on other core DPRK security policies Nevertheless for well over a decade there have been steady significant changes in approach intended to give Pyongyang greater flexibility to deal with the issue In the mid-19803 the North moved resolution of the U S troops issue from the start of any process of tension reduction to the final culminating step In the early 19905 they took another big step moving from accepting a longer term presence of U S forces to accepting U S troops on the peninsula with no time line at all B1 B1 On its toes Although the common wisdom was that Kim Jong 11 was not like his father in fact he is very much like Kim 11 Song That should not be surprising He underwent a two decade-long grooming period during which he worked in various parts of the power structure and observed what worked best in his father's style of rule B1 UNCLASSIFIED UNCLASSIFIED -4- 4 Rather than being a recluse Kim has appeared Bl frequently about twice a week in media-reported appearances more than that in public settings not reported by DPRK media for the past several years He has long followed ROK media and has kept himself well-informed on events in South Korea He may well know more about South Korea than Kim Dae Jung knows about the North C What we are seeing in the North is a return to the more lively style of diplomacy that Pyongyang practiced until Kim I1 Song's death The past four or five years have been the exception rather than the rule The North Koreans have survived independent and prickly among their larger neighbors precisely because they have not had an ideologically rigid foreign policy On the contrary the policy has reacted to changing circumstances in and around the peninsula Kim Jong 11 was a party to that policy for many years indeed he helped shape it C UNCLASSIFIED - UNCLASSIFIED Drafted x74766 Cleared '1 7 Approved File Name NKSUMMIT UNCLASSIFIED This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu